Government Operations Committee on Sept. 29th, 2016

[Sandy Middleton]

I may go out on a limb on here and try to speak for northwestern Ontario, but I certainly speak for my community. The simple fact is that if you're going to be a dog, you'll find a stick. People will always find something to complain about, no matter what you do.

I think the biggest thing that would affect our folks would be a dramatic—and I mean dramatic—cut in hours. Our hours have been cut a bit in small towns over the years. Staff have been cut over the years. It's still manageable. People still get their mail because it's easy to get: you go in, you put your key in the box, and you open it. The only thing that would really bother people is a dramatic cut in the hours when they could go into the post office.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Chief Bull, what would make people jump into the lake?

[Chief Clifford Bull]

For us, it would probably be centralizing mail pickup and doing away with the northern community once-a-week delivery. If people were told, “From now on, you have to go pick up your mail in Hudson, and you have access,” I think they would really be against that.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mayor Wilson, would you comment?

[Greg Wilson]

I think it would happen if there were no change and everything continued on the road it's on, or if there were radical change, such as privatization in some butchering type of way, so that service seriously dropped.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

I get the sense from you, Mayor Wilson—and I jotted down a note earlier as you were talking—that at the end of the day, you want the mail delivered. However, you want it delivered in a manner that ensures that Canada Post is sustainable going forward, and with as little subsidy as possible towards it so that it does become self-sufficient.

[Greg Wilson]

Yes, sir.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Do the rest of you share that view? Mr. Middleton, do you? Okay.

That's all I have to say, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Our final intervention will come from Madam Ratansi.

You have five minutes, please.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Your presentation has been a 360° turn, and this is interesting. I have a question that has a yes and no answer.

Canada Post, for the most part, is the fabric of Canada. It's a national symbol connecting communities. In your presentation, you look at it as both a business and a service, so it has to provide a service.

You stated that politics may be involved in the decisions. We have listened to a lot of presentations. Sometimes it may be politics that cause issues where depots are moved from, say, Windsor to Toronto, so that the mail goes from Windsor to Toronto to be sent to Winnipeg. That's nonsense.

Letting Pitney Bowes keep stamp prices at 85¢ while Canada Post charges one dollar—I think you heard the previous presentation there. Comparative advantages are not there, and it's management's decision. Whether management was trying to privatize it or what its mandate was in the previous government, we don't know. We just want to move forward.

You've been listening to the task force, and the task force has made certain recommendations. You also have seniors in your communities who will need special delivery, but some of the premise that you base it on—and I'm going to talk about financial sustainability—is that we were told by many that Canada Post management did not think outside the box. There are tactics that you can adopt from different parts of the world, and they didn't. They focused on financial sustainability. I therefore picked up their financial statements....

You are a mayor. Would you manage your assets and liabilities based on an ongoing concern or on insolvency?

[Greg Wilson]

You're talking to a mayor who inherited a $21 million debt and—

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

So you would be going into insolvency?

[Greg Wilson]

We were on the brink, and we had to change the way we did things.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Maybe you will not be able to answer here, but could you give us some of the creative solutions you brought forth to your community to turn it around?

Let me give you a little perception of their financial ongoing liabilities. Their current pension liability is $481 million. Their liability on an insolvency that they project in 2014 and then 2015 is between $6.8 billion and $8 billion, but they're not going insolvent. Nobody is saying Canada Post is closing its doors. Let us therefore focus on financial stability as an ongoing concern.

We've heard from people that management has less faith in the corporation than the workers have. Would you like to have an environment where your workers had more faith than you do as a mayor in your organization or in your community? How is it tenable?

[Greg Wilson]

You're losing me. I can't follow.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I am trying to say if you have faith in your community, that's why you developed it. If you didn't have faith in your community but your workers had faith, how would you be able to turn it around with $21 million in debt? You wouldn't. You need leadership, leadership that believes in the community. Correct? Yes, so I think the bigger question is, does the current leadership believe in the corporation and can it move forward?

The task force has a very limited mandate and the task force looked at their financials. The financials are available. Anybody who wants it, I'll send it to them. It's a very interesting perception when you're doing strategic thinking. Then you need to think outside the box, which you did, to turn your communities around. You have kept your communities healthy. How can we make Canada Post healthy?

[Sandy Middleton]

It's probably not something you may want to hear, but in our communities.... I believe Greg touched on it already. He has to have a second job, because we, as management, get paid next to nothing. I don't know if that's—

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

So you don't get paid the $650 million that the management gets paid at Canada Post?

[Sandy Middleton]

Not quite. I know we don't, and I'm pretty sure Dryden doesn't.

Our workers get paid more than we do, which you know going in. Does that attract good people, for the most part, in municipalities? I believe it does, because they are there because they want to make their municipalities better. I understand that could be a whole different set of parameters in a corporation, but at some point—

I remember talking to my brother-in-law once, whom I previously mentioned, and if he finished his mail route at noon—and he'd walk; he was in a tad better shape than I am—he could then do another route for overtime. I thought that was a funny way of looking at things: it was eight hours of work, but four of it's going to be straight time and four of it's going to be overtime, so he's getting paid for 12 hours here. I'm not sure if it's time and a half or double time for overtime, but it was great for him.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Can I make a closing statement? No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We're well over time now.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much. You've given me a creative solution.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

One thing I will say, though, just in case, is that if you, Mr. Middleton, or Mayor Wilson or Chief Bull have any additional information that you think would benefit the committee in its deliberations, I would suggest you please submit it directly to our clerk. We'll incorporate all that information as we're drafting our final report.

Thank you so very much for taking the time out of your very busy day to be with us today. Your presentations were excellent, and your insights were equally as good.

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes while we get ready for our next panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, please take your seats. Thank you very much.

Mr. Pareis, you have been listening to the proceedings, so you know how this works. Mr. Parkes, I'm not quite sure if you're aware, so let me just reiterate that we will be asking both of you gentlemen to give some brief opening comments. Give me your perspective on what you would like to see in the future for Canada Post, or what your organization's perspective is on it. Following your opening comments, we will have a series of questions from all of our committee members, and during that question-and-answer process, I hope we'll be able to elicit information that you may not have had a chance to give in your opening comments.

Mr. Parkes, would you care to give it a stab?

[Garry Parkes, President, Vermilion Bay, Happy Go Lucky Seniors Club]

Yes, I can start. I apologize for being not prepared, other than the fact that you're going to hear from me.

I'm from a small community. Our population and our municipality is about a thousand people. With the loss of businesses, our municipality is turning into to kind of a retirement home for seniors, and should we as a small community lose our post office, it would be devastating. I think this in itself would hurt our community. We lost our credit union recently, which doesn't help the situation, and that is kind of what it's all about.

As far as the services we get from Canada Post are concerned, I have no complaints whatsoever. I think it's great from a small community standpoint that we have a little post office, and I would like to continue to see it remain here. Of course, if you guys ever decide that it should leave, I've probably got your name and number now, so....